With the introduction of the Google Home
speaker, the Google Cast application will now undergo a change in logo
and design, as informed to users individually, and be controlled via the
new Google Home app. This will make the Google Home speaker and the
Chrome cast dongle functionality being controlled via a single app.
Google
is pushing in the new Google Home app and speaker to make stronger
in-roads into the home automation market, as Amazon Echo has already
gotten a stronghold in the market with millions of units already being
sold, and more to come the way.
The
market for home automation, especially VPA (Virtual Personal Assistant)
seems like a competitive one, in the times to come. A Strategy Analytics
study has already revealed that by 2017 itself, more than 3 million VPA
will have been shipped from the likes of Google and Amazon.
Google, especially is looking
aggressively at this market, trying to push up consumption of its
speakers to 15 million units annually, from the current figure of 1.8
million units. But in order to bring it to daylight, it is now unifying
its products and services under the Google Home umbrella, which is
similar in terms of functionality to the Amazon Echo product already
existing. This is also the reason why the Google Home speaker has been
priced aggressively at $129, which won’t perhaps give much of margins to
Google, but will make it easier to adopt for customers, who are
familiar with their products.
In terms of the change taking place, Google Home changes will come into effect over the next few weeks, and wont immediately.
According
to details available, Google Cast is still open for download from
Google Playstore, but will change under a single brand name of Google
Home, in the weeks to come. Though with pricing and features of the
product being attractive, the timeline for the product to launch in
India is not known as yet, because of the lack of any official word.
This would make the fans wait a while longer to get their hands on
Google Home VPA assisted speaker, which helps answer queries, books
hotels, flights, dinner reservations, and also plays music on request.
People in the UK can however expect this to come to them sooner, as word
has it that the launch is not much further for them.
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